ReelViews for R movies

At first glance, Sue Brooks' Japanese Story appears to be an infusion of genre stories: man versus nature, a road trip, and a mismatched romance. However, while there are elements of each ingredient in the movie, Brooks and screenwriter Alison Ti...

"Every war is different. Every war is the same." So says the voiceover narration in the closing moments of Sam Mendes' Jarhead. I might add: Every war movie is different. Every war movie is the same. This is Mendes' Gulf War answer to Apocalyp...

For the first time in more than a decade, teen films are all the rage. Stars from TV shows like "Dawson's Creek" and "Party of Five" are crossing over to the big screen in droves, resulting in such lackluster fare as Can't Hardly Wait and She's Al...

Jeff, Who Lives at Home is the second mainstream offering from mumblecore* directors Jay & Mark Duplass. The brothers took their first stab at reaching a broader audience with 2010's Cyrus, an affecting drama that demonstrated Jonah Hill's ability ...

Jennifer's Body mixes, matches, and crosses three popular genres: horror, comedy, and teen angst. Unfortunately, it fails at all of them - and "fails" might be too kind a term. This movie is a spectacular disaster, the kind of thing a cat might b...

Every time I think Hollywood has slipped beyond redemption, someone in the system produces a film like Jerry Maguire that renews my faith. Apparently, creativity is not dead in the mainstream movie market -- not entirely, at least. This is th...

Initially, the stage-to-screen transition of the Broadway musical Jersey Boys was expected to be helmed by Jon Favreau. When Favreau withdrew, it opened the door for veteran director Clint Eastwood to take the reins. Eastwood's approach to telling ...

Barry Levinson had an idea, and a pretty good one at that: take an actor, have him assume the role of a vigilante, and, as public adulation of his assumed personae escalates, blur the line between being a vigilante and acting the part. Unfortunat...

Jindabyne, an adaptation of Raymond Carver's short story "So Much Water So Close to Home," is an examination of a fractured family and how mistakes and miscommunication can lead to the widening of pre-existing fissures. While these themes are in t...

John Dies at the End is problematical. It's an attempt by director Don Coscarelli to adapt a book that has a fanatical following but has often been described as "unfilmable." The end result has garnered mixed reactions from those who love David Won...